How to manage all your hubs

In the short time I've been publishing hubs, I found it helps to be able to work on several hubs at a time. As new hubs are published, I need to go back to update the links from related hubs to the new one. Sometimes writing one hub sparks an idea for several additional hubs. These and other tasks can soon become overwhelming. So I developed a simple solution that lets you

• keep track of all your hubs,
• get an instant view of what type of hub work needs to be done
•  monitor progress on your current work
• go back and update hubs as needed.

All it takes is a simple spreadsheet program like Excel. l created a worksheet with the following columns divided into 4 groups:

The first group defines the hubs. These fields are the ones normally used to create reports.

• priority - a number you assign indicating the order you want to work on hubs. For me, a 0 ot 1 shows it's the next hub I'm going to work on. 99 indicates a published hub
• group - similar to the groups you set up on hubpages. For me, my main groups are travel, books, food and photography.
• country - the country involved, if any. This is most useful for my food and my travel hubs

These fields are the ones normally used to create reports. For example, I usually use a list sorted byb priority, then group, then country. This shows me the my current top priorities. A sort using country is helpful later when looking for link capsule items or backlinks. The beauty of a spreadsheet is these reports take just seconds to produce and all the data is untouched.

The next group of columns are the actual contents of your hubs, and here I use color to instantly show what needs to be done. All these columns start out filled with red. When a particular column is finished for a hub, I fill it with green. If a column has no use in a particular hub, for example, a map in a recipe hub, it's filled with yellow, showing it's been considered, but no work needs to be done.

• title - usually the same title as the hub itself
• text - indicates whether the text for this hub is complete
• PIX - are the necessary images inserted?
• Cascoly - have I set up links from my website to this hub?
• Amazon - have I inserted an Amazon capsule?
• links capsule - have I set up an outgoing links capsule?
• karma - have i examined the hub for useful links, especially those suggested by the hubpages tool?
• backlinks - have I set up backlinks to this hub from my other hubs?
• map - if it's useful, have I set up a Google map?

It's handy to break these down in this manner. Sometimes, I'll write text for several related hubs in the same session. Another time I might set up all the maps for high priority hubs. I may publish a hub now, then come back later to add karma or backlinks. This way I can focus on writing when I'm fresh, and do the brainfree work like setting up links later in the day.

The next set of items shows whether I have submitted the hub to various SEO and pinging sites. Therse sites help you to publicize your hubpages and get them noticed by search engines.  Again, color quickly shows me what needs work.

• Pingler - here I enter the date since I may re-ping at a later date
• redgage
• xomba
• sheToldme.com

Finally the url column stores the complete hub page URL. It's handy to have the urls of all your hubs in one place when you're setting up links, rather than having to dig them out from your hubpages account listing.

It takes a little work to set up, but then it runs smoothly.  If you suddenly have an idea for a series of hubs, just write them on separate lines and set a priority. Everything else can be done later.  Often I have an idea for a general hub like 'books about evolution', so I first write several detailed hubs like these:

Then when I write the general hub I already have more information I can link to